The Last Post

I realise I've strayed from the original idea of documenting the trials of late fatherhood, but I'll try and put that right, briefly.

The two main differences between raising Kit and Chloe are that a) I'm a lot older and therefore more knackered and b) Kit's a very active boy and therefore I'm more knackered. And c) I'm just more knackered.

When One I Made Earlier was born, I was a snake-hipped young thing who could bounce back from an all-nighter and cheerfully carry on with a reasonable level of parenthood through the deepest, hairiest hangover and still be ready to get my 80s groove on the next night.

Now, to have any chance of not being an irascible old scrote when Kit wakes up, I have to go to bed shortly before he does.

Some things are the same. The Tube is still blissfully unaware that people have babies and may have to transport them occasionally. (Stairs! Millions of them! With a pushchair, in the 21^st century!)

A lot of bars and pubs still loathe anyone with a pushchair. (I'm sorry you'd like to go out for lunch occasionally but unfortunately you bred.) 

The UK's pre-school options are still exorbitant, making it difficult for both partners to return to work; and women returning from maternity are still treated like second class citizens with nothing to offer so-you-may-as-well-go-home-and-clean-up-sick, love.

Thankfully there's a massive recession on so there aren’t enough jobs anyway. Huzzah!

Kit is now 1 and starting to show a keen interest in what are traditionally considered "boys toys" – cars, tractors, diggers and the like. Clearly he gets this from his mum. Personally, I loathe the car. I'd like to see all private car ownership banned, except from rural areas, like, say, Oldham, where they are needed for purposes of procreation.

The school run? Yeah, running would be a good idea.

Anyway, Kit loves anything with wheels on and "Car" is one of the half a dozen or so words in his vocabulary, along with "Gog", which means dog and "Transubstantiation", which means religion is a load of made up bollocks.

The only indoctrination I've subjected him to is a Sunday morning ritual where I bounce him on my knee while the theme from Match Of The Day plays. It often leads to a genuine interest in the beautiful game for up to five seconds of the first match. It's all the religion he'll ever need.

While Al Green casts a spell over him that sends him off to sleep, his favourite tune, without doubt - even more beloved than the theme from Rastamouse - is Sidney Bechet's "Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me". When it comes on, he stops what ever important matter he's attending to and does his little dance, which is just absurdly cute. 

I wasn't sure I was ready to go through this again, but it's been an amazing year, full of life-affirming rewards - many of them well-earned. I wouldn't change a thing. Except nappies. You have to change them. 

POSTSCRIPT

I'm stopping the blog now Kit has made it to 1 and we're starting to feel human again and hoping to have a life.

The best bits from The Living Dad blog have now been published along with some of my previous online writing in an eBook entitled Lies On Girls for the bargain price of 99p.

This book, a short book to be be honest, is in three parts, with the first containing my dating columns for Channel 4; the second my sex and relationships columns for Living, leading to part three, the consequences of parts 1 and 2: Parenthood.

I'd like to thank friends and strangers alike for reading, from the UK, USA, Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, France, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Indonesia, India Belgium, Ireland, Peru, Thailand, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Uganda.

You can always see what I'm up to at www.vinceraison.com

May all your problems be little ones…

Planet Thanet

When I was a boy, a prelude that in future years will tell Kit to stop listening because: a) It will be boring, b) he will have heard it before, and c) he will be hearing it again…

Anyway, when I was a boy, the Isle of Thanet was a regular holiday destination. It had great beaches, Turner's sunsets, Dreamland amusement park, saucy postcards, candyfloss, false teeth made entirely of sugar (without irony) and fake pints of beer for to help children follow their fathers into alcoholism.

Ah, those innocent, slightly crass days, when jellied eels were excusable and a holiday snog could make you feel the longing romance of American Graffiti, but without the cool cars or any hope of further education.

But soon cheap flights to Spain and the growing sophistication of the populace (again, no irony) saw tourism die a slow, tortuous death on the Kent Coast. Jobs disappeared, shops closed, Dreamland decayed and the region became one of the most deprived in Europe - the perfect place for Kit's first experience of the English seaside. It would lower his expectations in life, just like his fledgling support for Charlton Athletic.

Personally I love a ramshackle seaside town, especially out of season, in the drizzle. But now, after decades of decline the place is picking itself up. 

We went down to see the new gallery, the Turner Contemporary, which I enjoyed. I particularly liked its size: small. I get gallery fatigue if I'm viewing exhibitions for more than 9 minutes, often resulting in a headache or a pulled hamstring.

Kit likes any gallery as he can crawl for what seems like miles before getting tackled and tickled. He loved the beach and didn’t want to leave but would prefer the sea was removed entirely. 

I enjoyed the Lifeboat, a pub that's a beacon of hope in the rejuvenated Old Town and doesn't suffer the 11am rush that some of the other establishments do.

Margate's in a strange, almost adolescent, phase of transformation going from deprivation toward gentrification, with some uncomfortable overlaps of tagged, shaven mouth-breathers juxtaposed with chi-chi shops and cafes. It sometimes looks like the Addams Family Go On Holiday.

But it’s also retained some of its old charm and eccentricities, like the Shell Grotto, the pinball parlour and the Mad Hatter café, where it's always Christmas. It's just bonkers enough to get us back next year, at least until Kit's old enough to press for a proper holiday, where it's just nice and he doesn't have to appreciate a bit of weirdness to 'get it'. Still, that's years away.

More Travels With Tiny Persons

Luxembourg and Margate may not be among the 100 Places You Must Visit Before You Die, not unless you've got the rare Tax Havens and Depressed Towns On The Perpetual Cusp Of Regeneration edition. However, we've got mates in both and we thought we'd save Machu Picchu until Kit's memory is a little more developed (and he can maybe pay his way, if not ours).

So 'The Bourg', as nobody calls it, afforded Kit his first flight and foreign destination. Travelling from London City Airport was so hassle-free I'm going to make all my future travel choices based on whether you can get there from City.

Having said that, I did suffer the most intimate security frisking I'd ever experienced. If it had been a lady frisker, I would have joined the queue again and maybe brought flowers. It wasn't. It was the other thing. I'm sure he got a bit of 'nad on the way down, during which, out of habit, I closed my eyes.

The city of Luxembourg is ancient, pretty and twice the size of the actual country – which is about the width of the A4. Luxembourg boasts, if that's the right word, the earliest average bedtime in Europe – 9pm. As Spud and I still reside in the realm of the sleep-deprived, this actually sounded attractive. I also liked the frisson of rebellion you might experience if you stayed up for the second half of a Champions League game.

The country is also run by a kindly Grand Wizard who holds a massive party in the city for his birthday and gives everyone the day off, as they're not used to staying up late. Much loved by the Luxembourgers, they pour out of their little houses in the national costume of jeans, trainers and polo shirts, drink themselves Belgian and tuck each other in at nearly 10 o'clock. Madness.

Dizzy with excitement at being away, we stayed up far too late with our hosts and drank way too much on the night we arrived. That left us in a fug of diminished capability that would disable us for the rest of the trip.

Also, sleeping in the same room as Kit means you need a holiday when you get home. And you're not going to get it. You're going to go to Margate.

Tiny, landlocked and bordered by Belgium, France and Germany, it's no surprise its history and culture is entwined with its neighbours and their passing dynasties. It eventually asserted its independence however when the Dutch William III relinquished his claim to the region with the phrase: "Here, you can have that bit."

I was still surprised when someone tried to use Kit's slightly Germanic Barnet to make him look like Adolf "Chuckles" Hitler and lead the country to the Sudetenland.

They're not much into conquering, though, bless them. Indeed, the motto of Luxembourg is "Mir wëlle bleiwe wat mir sinn", which means, "We want to remain what we are," though it is often mistranslated as "No thanks, we already have double glazing."

I was lucky enough to experience Jarre, not the tedious French composer, thank Christ, but a hearty Luxembourgish dish, at the Mousel Cantine. It's basically a knuckle of pork, slow-roasted on a spit for 24 hours that comes at you like roast ham, entirely encased in crackling. So delicious, most of it still resides in my small intestine.

Thanks to our fine hosts and their friends we had right old good time in Luxembourg and returned to London exhausted and full of slowly digesting meat. Next stop on the world tour: Margate.

Snot Fair

Kit has been an easy baby who's never far from laughter, but a cold is now preparing him for a lifetime of trying to elicit sympathy for minor ailments.

Women have long mocked the male propensity for being pathetic in the face of the sniffles. Girls get colds, men get flu and are only fit to lie on the sofa, groaning, with perhaps some Carling Cup highlights and a copy of Razzle.

"Man flu" they call it, to differentiate it from actual flu and mock our feeble resistance to the life-sapping symptoms. Little do they understand how we suffer.

That's why I renamed Man Flu, The Widow Maker, so girls would automatically say "Poor you" and offer me a Lemsip and maybe a fried egg sandwich.

That's another thing that sees sympathy drain away – the surge of appetite that gives the impression that everything is alright and that in fact we might be having a great big laugh. But as my mate, Andy, says: "Feed a cold, feed a fever."

Kit is currently keeping us both awake at night, plus a few neighbours, acting like it's worst thing to ever happen to him. But that's because it is.

Men flop about in much the same way because it's also the worst thing to happen to us, keeping us from our normal pursuit of having a good time.

When I mention to Spud that I feel the foul stench of The Widow Maker's breath upon me, she is wont to bring up the 42 hours of labour she endured to produce our son. Fair enough. That makes it one-all then (I say out of earshot).

Naturally, Kit has passed on his cold to us, so now I must sign off from my death bed and see what's in the fridge. 

Get A Job!

With Kit approaching 11 months it's high time he thought about a career, or preferably, how to avoid one.

I had about as much idea of my future plans at 11 months as I did when first asked by a Careers Advisor, "Have you given any thought to a career?"

"Have you?" I replied, given that his role was to go around schools telling disinterested kids they should join the Army.

I decided against telling him I wanted to be a footballer. Or Spider-Man. Or both.

You're bound to wonder what your child might be when they grow up. Previous generations tended to think along the lines of a safe career, a job for life with a nice pension, like banking. Now bankers have no more respect than pornographers and less perks.

Many kids when asked what they want to be answer: "Famous".  They probably mean X Factor famous – a noble ambition. After all, who else is going to open the Poundlands of the future?

It is hard to think of Kit as anything other than a baby. Mind you, the same could be said of some of my friends.

Now he's crawling he has an uncanny knack of finding the most dangerous thing in the room, which probably rules out a career in the police.

Richard Littlejohn (pronounced kŭnt)

The only physical attribute to offer any clues is his hands. They are massive! Big broad fists on a tiny body, like Barry McGuigan or Mickey Mouse. But no parent would want their child to go into the ring, unless, in my case, it was to pummel Richard Littlejohn's face beyond recognition. That would be ace.

People are often surprised by my love of boxing, as I am clearly a man of peace, if not extreme cowardice. I'm a lover not a fighter - so do be careful if I happen to get you in a clinch.

Boxing though, is in our blood, as my great-great-I don't know how many greats-to-be honest- grandfather was a bare knuckle fighter who is said to have killed a man in a bout and had to flee the country to Canada.

I appreciate boxing is brutal and can't make a strong argument for punching someone's head for entertainment, but while it's still legal, I'll lap it up. Apart from the under-appreciated mental side of the sport, boxing provides discipline and structure to an awful lot of lads who would otherwise fall into crime, or worse, The X Factor. 

The Things You Do For Love

Making furniture selections on the basis of what goes best with chunder is a clear concession to parenthood. Having a built-in fridge in a La-Z-Boy recliner in front of a Sky Sports-boasting telly is no longer a requirement. Something cheap, washable and pride-free is. 

You throw away your dignity when you have a baby, as there is nothing too embarrassing for you to do if it makes your little one laugh that cackle of abandon. 

Being a little self-conscious, I struggled to surrender to baby babble to get that winning gurgle at first. I tricked myself into it by singing a few lines from a Tom Waits song to him while jiggling his belly:

A-zeeba zabba zeeba zabba zeeba zabba zoo,

Skriba dabba deeba dabba, deeba dabba ziy

Luckily he's chuckling his tiny arse off by this point so I elect not to include the next verse:

Cleavage! Cleavage!

Thighs and hips

From the nape of her neck

To the lipstick lips

Along with the verse about Chesty Morgan and Watermelon Rose ("Raise my rent and take off all your clothes"), it wouldn't be appropriate.

Sometimes getting Kit to laugh is a necessity, just so I can fit a spoon in his mouth during a reluctant meal. This also requires an absence of self-regard and may take any number of animal noises, songs about poo, or an impression of a dinosaur eating a muffin. Anything, really. Anything.

I do worry though that it may lead to lifelong laughing phobia in which Kit is scared to guffaw in case someone shovels avocado down his throat while reminding him it's a superfood. But then what are parents if not sponsors of the psychiatric trade?

Attempts to make bathtime fun also require songs and jollity. A ditty that has become "In The Nuddy" to the tune of "In The Navy" announces the slow down of the day towards bedtime, via the bath. I do wonder though, why I bother to mangle songs for his pleasure, when, given his current level of understanding, I could be singing about photosynthesis in a light-depleted environment for all he cared - though that would be a challenge to a Village People melody.

Then there are those other things you do - a whole lot of walks to parks and ponds. When a friend with a baby the same age announced a birthday picnic, I said "Great! Scotch eggs and pork pies!"

"No, there won't be any pork pies," she said. "We're all vegetarians. It will be all lovely vegetables and fruit."

"That's not a picnic," I complained. "It's an allotment."

We met at an idyllic spot in Greenwich Park, with a fantastic view spanning London old and new. As the numbers swelled, the smaller I became, until I was ready to opt out and find a pub just the right size.

When Kit started to get fractious I offered to take him for a stroll so he'd have a nap and I'd have an escape. He dropped off immediately so I headed to the Plume Of Feathers and had a lovely pint in the sun while Kit dozed in the shade. Heaven must be very like this, I thought.

After a while, the phone rang. It was Spud, still at the picnic.

"Are you in the pub?" She guessed, uncannily.

"The pub? Certainly not." Technically, I was outside the pub, doing my duty as a parent whilst not forgetting to nourish myself. I'd like to think we're all winners in this tale.

Holidays With Small People

The prospect of going away with a baby is daunting one for new parents. Even for old parents, like me. There are all the outfits, several for each day as stuff get soiled by food or worse. Then there are all the clothes for the baby.

Babies come with so much equipment that a trip to the Lakes is akin to a Space Shuttle launch. There are millions of things to remember as you need to be prepared for every possibility: being held hostage on a train for days, a nuclear attack or a sudden conversion to Judaism.

"Did you bring the nuclear deflector shields, darling?"

"Of course."

"What if he suddenly converts to Judaism?"

"I brought a kippah."

"Just the one?"

There was also a fear of what we would find when we got there. We were going to the Lake District to stay with my mate Mike, a thoroughly unreliable wastrel and one of the least sensible people I know.

Uncle Mike is known to his friends' children as Druncle Mike, as they never see him sober. Incidents have a habit of occurring around him. He may climb a tree, strip naked, get arrested or attempt a world record at any moment.

One night, when talking absolute shit in a pub, he said to me, haughtily: "I can't decide if I'm a scientist or a philosopher."

"You're neither," I replied. "You're a gaudy dilettante."

And he is. He's a retired TV producer, turned African adventurer/microlight pilot, turned interior designer, whose decorative style can best be described as Boy Georgian.

Mike was to pick us up in Preston. Would he be sober enough to drive? Would he be on time for the first time in his life? Would he remember? Because finding ourselves in a strange town miles from home with a baby, unable to speak the language, is the kind of nightmare that stops new parents leaving the house. Luckily, we had our nuclear deflector shields and a survival pack big enough to take him to his late teens.

I needn't have feared. Mike, and his young girlfriend Robyn, were there waiting for us. The only remotely unusual thing we had to do en route to Coniston was stop to pay cash to a man who had just bought a Russian submarine. Whatever.

Mike and Robyn proved to be perfect hosts and even had a travel cot ready for our little lad to sleep in.  Kit fell hard for Robyn. As soon as her spied her soft blonde hair, he perked up, winked and gave her his 'Get your coat, love,' eyes.

First off we went to a pub to watch the Grand National. We tried to get Kit to dribble on the racecard to pick a winner but he wasn't having it. Clearly he didn’t want to look sloppy in front of Robyn.

Kit was strangely drawn to beer too, but after two more pubs he alerted us to his three-pub limit. Now he tells us. 

Spud and I haven't been out much since Kit arrived so having few drinks whilst continuing with the sleep deprivation schizzle had a debilitating effect.

The next night, having eaten Mike's Beast Feast Barbeque (beef, lamb and venison) we were unable to accept his request to join him for the local pub quiz.

"Pub quiz? I'm from London, Mike. You know, the city with all the… stuff," I bluffed, unwilling to admit I craved an early night more than a general knowledge triumph over farmers.

Mike was desperate to go and to win. He had never won and new blood could help him beat the two teams that always shared the prize. Mike always came second. When he beat Ted's team, Bob's team won. When he beat Bob's team, Ted's team won.

In the morning he reported he had beaten Bob's team and Ted's team.

"Ace! You won, then?"

"No, I came second."

"Who to?"

"Sophie Ellis Bextor's team."

"Oh."

You couldn't make it up. Indeed, why would you?

Mike and Robyn showed us the joys of the Lakes, the lovely walks, scenery, waterfalls, brooks and becks. It really is the most beautiful place in Britain, something I never tire of telling people from Yorkshire.

One morning Mike brought in a newborn lamb, fresh in the world that morning. Kit was alarmed to find it wasn't a new toy and freaked when he it baaed at him. Yet later at the zoo, he was nonchalant when a giraffe leaned down to see if he had any dinner for him, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

It's easy not to go anywhere and stay in your comfort zone but we were glad we left it to go to the Lakes, even if afterwards we needed a holiday we weren't going to get. Having the baby in our room meant no one gets a good night's sleep. Drinking boozes and eating mostly meat also has a price.

But we learned we could go away. That Kit had a three-pub limit, likes blondes and thinks lambs are tossers.